ArchiCAD and SSD drives – speed test

by
GRAPHISOFT and Marton Kiss · updated:
03.30.2012

Using SSDs instead of traditional hard drives is a great performance upgrade as they provide lower access time and latency when reading/writing the data. This results faster load times and the write speed can also benefit of this. To read more about SSDs see: the SSD article on Wikipedia.

In this brief test we compared three computers – laptops.

Computer 1: a Dell Latitude laptop with a 5400 rpm hard drive

Computer 2: a mid 2009 MacBook Pro with a 7200 rpm hard drive

Computer 3: a mid 2009 MacBook Pro with a Solid-state drive (SSD)

Test results:

5400 rpm

7200 rpm

Solid-state Drive

Open ArchiCAD after boot (built in template):

0:45

0:43

0:27

Open mid size commercial project:

0:55

0:48

0:34

Update 167 drawings:

2:00

2:17

2:03

Publish 33 layouts to PDF:

1:32

0:56

0:59

Open a huge commercial project:

6:32

5:37

2:44

The results are in minutes:seconds format.

Experiences:

The test shows that all processes that are mostly reading data from the drive speed up extremely – opening ArchiCAD, loading projects, loading libraries. Other processes may speed up slightly but the result is not that extreme.

If you need even more speed:

different makes/models of SSDs provide different speed, consult the manufacturer’s websites for performance tests (the faster drives are usually more expensive)